Osborn Fiber Studio

We’ve watched nearly every minute of Swiss women’s hockey so far. (Big game vs. Russia tomorrow at 7:30 a.m. EST; we’re rooting for Switzerland and praying they all do their best!) But I have a different red and white on my mind today.

The second batch of hat love is on its way to M shortly, having been completed this Valentine’s Day Cyril & Methodius Day.

The pattern is Cabernet DK, a pattern I fell in love with on Ravelry. Monika Serna, the designer, clearly herself fell in love with the stitch pattern, and went a little hog-wild with it… her series includes a scarf, a shawl, a cowl, and an infinity scarf all in the same stitch… in three weights, and for a complete variety of sizes. I can’t imagine liking anything enough to design all that, let alone do all the test knitting, but if I did it would be a pattern like this. It’s really beautiful.

The yarn is Sonoma, by a yarn company called Baah! With the exclamation point. That’s important, I’m sure. I was looking for a red, a really really red red, and this had that rich scarlet I needed. The pictures can’t quite capture it, but it is a beautiful tone. It’s cushy and lovely, soft but quite sturdy; exactly the sort of yarn I wish I could knit a whole sweater from, if I was made of moolah.

I followed the directions, and blocked it over a balloon with my seminary’s logo on it. The hat was all ready to go, when I realized… you know, if you’re losing your hair, maybe you don’t want a hat with holes in it. So after a bit of waffling, I pulled out some 16″ 4s, did a few calculations, and knit a liner out of the same suri/merino lace that went into the last hat.

I cranked the liner out in a few days, finished the crown, sewed in the ends, and had another epiphany… I had closed the liner with the hat inside out. Meaning there was now no way to turn the hat the right way in! Oh well. Pulling out the crown and re-doing it with the hat the right way out provided another excuse to watch men’s figure skating today instead of doing my homework.

With the liner pulled out, I can’t help but notice it looks a bit like a pill. But that’s not quite the imagery I had in mind for this prescription. Leukemia is all about blood and bone, marrow and cells. Two of the base ingredients of our bodies, inexplicably misbehaving. So they get rebooted, more or less, not exactly something living tissue is made for, but it seems the most effective way of getting rid of their malady. An ungentle cure for an ungentle disease.

So there’s lots of gentleness in this hat, and maybe a bit of gentility. A lace pattern, maybe slightly reminiscent of those life-saver shaped blood cells, but even more reminiscent of some fine antique upholstery. The red is strong, with well-defined stitches, while the white peeking through is delicate and freeform. (And if M decides later to have just the red hat, the white liner is easy peasy to just cut out. But it’s pretty cool like this, you gotta admit.)

Enough gravity. Now, we will have a series of gratuitous Valentine baby pictures. Because today is the anniversary of Naomi’s due date, so she is Cyrilla again for the day.